Contest Time!

It's time for a BLOG CONTEST!

Ok, so you can't really get to Hawaii from winning my contest, but it got your attention, didn't it?

Here's the contest:

Write a haiku about Valentine's Day. There is a lot to say about this day. Tradition has it that it's a day for lovers, but I think it's become a day for Hallmark and Hershey's to make some serious cash. It's a day for kids to eat sugar and have a party at school with cute boxes decorated in construction paper hearts of pink, red and purple. It's a day that some single people loathe. Other singles I know love the day as it's a reason to have a big bash with lots of other single friends.

So, what's your take on the day? Put it in a haiku and write it into your comment. You are allowed as many haiku entries as you wish because once you write one, you will want to write another and another and, well, you get the idea.

A winner will be announced on February 14 (of course) and will receive two Regal movie tickets. The tickets can be used for whatever movie you and your Valentine wish to go to.

According to WikiHow: A haiku is a non-rhymed verse genre, conveying an image or feeling in two parts spread over three lines, usually with a seasonal reference. There are 5 syllables in the first sentence, 7 in the second and 5 again in the last sentence.

To get you started, here's my haiku:

Ten sticky fingers
Pass a sweet pink card to me
It says I love mom

If you need some more serious instruction click here for real haiku info.

Bring on the haikus! Serious, funny, clever... they are ALL fun and someone will win movie tickets!

Don't shop hungry

Today, I got kids up and moving and then got myself onto the dreadmill, which, by the way, I think is trying to kill me. It just keeps going and going and expects me to keep up. I told my sis-in-law, Kristine, yesterday that I blame it on Eve. Perfectly created as she was, she was a disobedient girl and now to keep this body in shape I have to spend time on the dreadmill to combat the original sin that sits on my theighs. By extension, the dreadmill is a tool of the devil. Of this I'm sure.

ANYWAYS... after several repetitions of 4 minutes of running and 3 minutes of walking was finished, I took Emily to school. Then it was time to head to Safeway. We needed milk. Seems like we always need milk, but today we were totally out after breakfasts were finished. I walked into the Safeway, feeling pretty good about having already finished my workout, and headed for the dairy case. I got the milk and some cheese. In the yogurt section I spied stickers that said "50 cents off" on the 75 cent yoplaits. They "expired" today. Tell me, isn't yogurt already spoiled? Isn't that how they make it? I never trust dates on yogurt, so I scored big time on the strawberry kind.

As I headed toward the produce seciton, it hit me. HUNGER! It was still that blasted dreadmill working as hard as it could to kill me. It gave me a hunger that said, "Just head back to the bakery section and get the cherry turnover. Nobody will know! You can eat it in the car!" I REFUSED! I was not going to let the dreadmill win. Not this time! Not even when it changed its chant to, "The rice pudding is on sale, get some! Pick up a spoon at the soup counter and you can eat that in the car too!" Oh how I love rice pudding. Cool, sweet, creamy. No raisins for me though, thanks. sigh.

Shesh! How's a girl to shop in such a hungry state? I bought chicken (on sale for 99 cents a pound!) to can later, some veggies and got the heck out of there before I caved.

Once home I had a simple bowl of oatmeal. I'm trying to be good.

Happy Birthday Amanda!

Dear Amanda,

The Daily Olympian simply said, "Arend, Brenda and Jack, Olympia, a girl, Jan. 29, 1995."

That little public announcement didn't come close to expressing how overjoyed we were to become your parents!





It's been so much fun to be your mom and dad, and today as you turns 15, we couldn't be more proud of you. You are funny, smart, good natured and thoughtful. We have loved seeing you grow in your relationship with Jesus as well as seeing God's expression of love to US as parents, blessing us with a kid like you.

Today when you were getting your driver's permit, I couldn't believe that 15 years have passed by since I woke one morning to find that "the water was broken" and we knew we would become parents in the next several hours. What we didn't know was how much fun it was going to be to watch you grow!

So my Panda Bear, happy happy birthday to you! We love you tons and can't wait to see what the next 15 years of having you as our daughter brings to our family!!!

You and your cousins (well, those you had at the time). Collin, Kaisha and Nicole. You were about 1 week old in each of these pictures.

You at about 9 months old. This was the stage when people asked if I put your hair in curlers.

Below are pictures of you turning one. Your cheeks are pink because you had just gotten up from a late nap. Family was going to come over but the highways were ice so you partied it up with just mom and dad.

Now, the below pics were taken today! You've come a long way baby!

Congratulations Amanda!

Photo blogging #2: aperture/f stop

I'm finding that I'm a pretty slow learner when it comes to my camera. I have sat down numerous times with the camera in one hand and the manual in the other, working through what the different settings do. I always "get it" at the time, but a week later, it's gone. Swoosh! The information leaves my brain like my parents leaving Washington for Arizona in October. It's a quick exit.

After looking through a few photography web sites, I have decided that maybe I'm taking the wrong approach. Instead of trying to digest everything for one photograph, I need to focus on one thing at a time. Isn't that how I learned violin? math? writing? Focus on one aspect, then when I'm ready, I'll move to the next. So, that's the new approach. Baby steps to good photography... baby steps to good photography... (Have you seen What About Bob?)

Okay. Baby step #1... aperture. It's one of those pieces of my camera that has been a bit of a mystery to me, but it's referenced so often that I figured it's a basic piece of photography. Bear with me as I write this all out. I'm blogging this stuff because then when I forget it, I can look back and see what I wrote! Also, maybe just writing it out will help the info stick into my brain.

After a little internet digging, here's what I found out about aperture:

1. Aperture is not a camera setting at all. It's actually a setting of the lens. On older cameras it was an adjustment made on the lens, but with the modern digital SLR cameras, the makers decided it would be handy for people to have the setting actually sit on the camera instead of the lens. No wonder I've been confused! There. I can blame my confusion on the people who make the cameras. *whew*

2. Aperture is a like the pupil in your eyeball; it controls how much light is allowed to come into the camera.

3. Contrary to logic, the larger the aperture setting, the smaller the lens or "pupil". A big f number lets in less light.

4. Conversely, the smaller the aperture setting, the more wide open the lens. A smaller f number lets in more light.

5. The big deal about aperture? It can control the depth of focus. It reminds me a little of having my eyes dialated at the eye doctor. I leave with wide open pupils, and only things up close have a chance of being clear. The background is very blurry. Same with aperture. A high aperture setting means the lens opening is small, and background is more clearly captured. The depth of focus is greater. A low aperture setting lets more light in, like the dialated pupil, and background blurs.

This bluring or depth of focus has made me crazy in the past. For instance, I take a picture of the 3 kids, and only the one in the front is really clear; the 2 in the back are blurry. Depth of focus problem. Aperture problem. Now I know!!!

The fun of this will be when I want to create a blurry background. I've managed in the past to get a soft, blurry background, but I think it was by random accident and messing with camera buttons without knowing what I was doing. Now, I will at least have a clue of where to begin!

Look at the photos below. For lack of a better subject, I grabbed the AAA Northern California. I promise to get better subjects in the future, but we're excited about planning a trip to the Bay Area. We are thinking we will drive down. Have you ever driven 12 hours... in a row... with kids?  I'll take any tips on this topic, as well as tips on aperture. Okay. Enough about all that.

Can you see which has the more blurry background? To take these, I set my camera to AV (aperture priority... the other settings adjust to what I set for aperture).

f/3.5 (low setting, aperture quite open)













f/10 (higher setting, aperture moderately open)










Isn't this cool? I can see it coming in handy when I want to get something like this on purpose, instead of by accident:

a beautiful huckleberry with a nicely blurred background, f/4.5

photo blogging #1: you have to start somewhere!

For Christmas I received Photoshop Elements and it's taken me until now to try it out! I had no clue of where to begin. I mean, obviously, I'd like to remove the wrinkles shadows on faces and get rid of red-eye. But, I know the software is meant for so much more than that. So, today I was talking to a photographer friend and showing her some of the pics on this blog. She commented that my camera tends to take "cool" photographs (refering to the colors and white balance). She noticed how in some pictures the skin tones make people look ashen or blue. Her suggestion? Add red to the photos. That meant I had to finish installing the program and open it. Yikes.

It took a little fiddling, but with some trial and error, I was able to warm up the skin tones on people. Take a look:

Before...

After...

Before... (the kids all look a little gray-faced)

After...

Before... (I've always thought the kids looked washed out on this one, especially their faces)

After... (I was even able to add in a little tan on this one. Too much?)

So that is blog post number one about my adventures with Photoshop. Next up, removing the, um, shadows from the faces. Stay tuned!

the coolest cookies!

Last weekend we drove to Seattle to take in the Body Exhibit. I won't blog on that, but you can hop over to Amanda's blog to see what she wrote about it. I will say that in spite of the controversy surrounding how the bodies were obtained, it was an amazing thing to see. I'm glad I went. Reminded me of anatomy class in college and the cadaver lab, except I didn't have to go around, labeling all of the parts in front of me. I was surprised to find that I could remember the structures of the larynx (can you say "hyoid bone" 10 times, fast?) and most of the muscles in the abdomin, neck and face! (sternocleidomastoid... just say it once, that's good enough)

Okay, enough about that.

Now, the cookies. After the exhibit, we wandered the downtown for a bit and found ourselves at Williams Sonoma. Hmmmm, wonder how that happened? You know I love a good kitchen shop.

At WS, Jack spied the most fun cookie cutter I have ever seen. Have I told you he's an amazing guy? He even has an eye for great kitchen stuff.

It comes with 3 coookie cutters (star, heart and a rectangle with a scalloped edge) and a bunch of plastic letters, sort of like the letters you would find on an old typewriter.

Here's how it works:

1. Make a sugar cookie dough. Emily chose to tint hers yellow. Roll the dough out per the instructions, about 1/4" thick.

2. Insert the letters you want into the cutter and cut the cookie. Then, before removing the cutter, push the plunger down a bit to stamp your message into the dough.

3. Bake and ta-daaaaaaa! You have a really cool and unique cookie.

Next time we'll decorate these to really jazz them up, but for this time, Emily was just happy to make the cookies. She made one for her friends at school. Imagine the possibilities: baby shower, thank yous, birthday, teacher gift, staff appreciation, congratulations, Valentines Day  ... I think I will need to buy more flour, butter and sugar.

a dysfunctional relationship

It's a love-hate relationship, really.

It's not all that complicated.
I love the results, but hate the work it demands of me.

You may be asking, "Of whom are you speaking, Brenda?"

I would reply, "Why, Mr. Dreadmill, of course."

Mr. Dreadmill, aka: our treadmill

Well, even as dysfunctional as it is, I will persevere in my relationship with Mr. D. Afterall, shorts-weather is coming!